Czeslaw and Carol Have Semi-Affectionate Hijinx
by TheCrampReturns
Summary: Title says it all; Czeslaw finds it nearly impossible to relate to most people, children most of all. That's subject to change, however, after a chance meeting with a cute young girl who's very much his opposite. Czes begins to slowly build positive feelings toward this girl, and circumstances make it so he has plenty of time to get used to her. Collab with my sister.


Czeslaw Meyer was not a child. Well, he was, but he wasn't really. Immortality may have forced the visage of a child onto him for all eternity, and by objective measurements he supposed he would never really be an adult, a couple centuries of life had made him about as far from a child in spirit as was possible.

At least, that's what he assumed, being as indifferent to the minds of children (and people in general) as he was. That more than anything is what made him feel different; his lack of caring. In that way Czes wasn't just not a child, he was practically inhuman. The year was 1931, he was over 230 years old, and he could count on one hand the number of living people he felt any genuine affection for. Maybe two hands, if he was taking a moment to fondly remember the short time he had spent with Mary Beriam aboard The Flying Pussyfoot.

This was, admittedly, something that happened often, though the reason for that had thoroughly escaped him. He had known the girl for maybe a few hours, tops, yet those few hours were ingrained in a head that would sometimes look back on entire decades as nothing but a blur. He had actually taken to asking Ennis about it.

"Well, it sounds to me as if this girl you met was a friend." The young woman said. "The way you describe it, it seems as though you enjoyed yourself, at least a little bit. I don't mean to offend, but enjoyment isn't something I see you express that often. Perhaps it was just the experience of being with another child for the first time in such a long while that made you really feel like one again. I presume experiencing that time with your young acquaintance put you in that mindset once more."

At the time, Czeslaw had ignored most of this theory, choosing to home in on the fact that he was NOT a child, before he was preemptively interrupted by Ennis' significant other, Firo.

"Or maybe," said the man with a cheeky grin, "Czes's a little dizzy with the Beriam dame"

Czes glared daggers at Firo, while Ennis simply tilted her head, curious as to his meaning. Czes had been living with the couple for a months at that point, and he had long ago decided that Firo was closer to a child than he would ever be.

The memory made the thing-in-a-boy's-body sigh. That conversation had been a few days prior, and he had spent the intervening time thinking about Ennis' meaning. For having the least worldly experience amongst them (on account of actually being less than a year old), she had raised a potentially solid point. Maybe it was simply the presence of a kid that made him feel like one again. Personally, he didn't wasn't to believe it.

* * *

><p>At the moment, Czes was walking through the city by his lonesome, having assured Firo and Ennis that he was just going for a stroll and wouldn't require any company. As he looked around him, he saw the usual faceless rabble that he had come to see the whole mortal world as over the years. For the life of him, Czeslaw couldn't bring himself to relate at all to their trivial endeavors, and deep down he knew that was his fault.<p>

For so long, Czes' life had been punctuated with a single goal, a goal that had had its brakes cut out several months ago. He hadn't yet adjusted to the idea of living a normal everyday life, and as someone destined to live forever regardless of the world around him, he saw very little reason to do so. He looked around and saw hard-working average Joe's, shady businessmen, and upstart thugs, all working toward the same basic goal of making ends meat. Or was it ends _meet_? Czeslaw had never bothered to figure out the workings of that particular expression.

Shaking his head vigorously, the thing-in-a-boy's-body decided he cared not for any type of meat/meet. Why should he when his survival was assured? Why should he feel the need to do anything at all?

The nature of Czeslaw's immortality was complex, but one thing he knew above all else was that he could still feel pain. He had many, many years to feel it over and over again, and his pain threshold had risen steadily over those years, to the point where certain things that should hurt barely even registered.

With that said, though it didn't hurt at all when a little girl in a white flapper's outfit ran smack into him and sent him crashing to the ground, it still caught him off guard.

"Wha-?! Hey! Watch where you're going!" He shouted in irritation, as the girls todd up and dusted herself off. The girl, with short, light brown hair and somewhat large grey eyes, wore a somewhat expensive white dress, which was odd for a time of poverty. She lowered her head in an apologetic bowing motion.

"I'm so sorry!" She cried. "Really, I am, but it's getting away!"

Czeslaw found himself curious as to what the girl was talking about, but as he raised himself to his feet she had already bolted off after what she was pursuing. Squinting his eyes just as the girl turned to run straight down an alley, he saw that the object of her pursuit was a little white mouse.

Part of Czes' brain told him to brush it off. This girl was obviously just another child playing an idiotic game with a stray animal, and it was neither pressing nor interesting enough to be his business. Yet at the same time, part of his brain couldn't help _but_ take an interest. An entire civil debate raged in his head within the space of maybe two seconds, before he eventually decided with a groan to observe this girl's escapades. It's not like he had anything better to do.

Turning into the alley, Czes saw the girl crouched over the mouse, which was caught between her and a brick wall. The first thing Czes noted was the girl's face. Granted, he couldn't see much of it from this angle, but as he got closer he found it different than what he expected. Experience taught him that when a child (or really, _anyone_) had cornered an animal, their default expression would be one of sadistic pleasure at the "fun" they were soon to commence with. Either that or smug confidence in their ability to corner such stupid creatures.

But this girl's face was neither. Instead, her eyes held nothing but pure, innocent curiosity. She reached out toward the mouse apprehensively, her movements nervous and careful. She obviously wanted the small creature in front of her to feel safe, and it seemed to work, as the mouse sniffed at her fingers, before allowing her to pet at it lightly. Getting closer to the girl, Czeslaw saw her curious expression morph to a kind grin.

"What are you doing?" He asked, making the girl shout in surprise as both her and the mouse whipped their heads toward him. Taking him in, the girl's face grew nervous again.

"Stay right there." She said to her mouse acquaintance, before turning back to Czeslaw.

"Is this about knocking you down earlier?" She asked, twiddling her hands behind her back and digging the front of her left shoe into the ground. "Cause I am, really sorry about that. Please don't tell on me! I'll lose points!""

"Huh?" Czeslaw questioned. He had honestly been so caught up in observing the girl that he had forgotten she even _had_ bumped into him. "No, I was just wondering what you were doing with that mouse is all."

"Oh!" The girl said, her expression reaching again for normalcy. She pressed a finger to her lips (careful to make sure it wasn't the one she had just touched a mouse with) as if contemplating her answer. "I'm not entirely sure you'd believe me if I told you."

"Why?" Czes asked, growing even more intrigued. "Is it something asinine?"

"U-um, no! At least, I don't think it is..." She said, lowering her head slightly again.

"Well, if it's not something that assumes I'm an idiot, feel free to tell me."

"This mouse," Carol said slowly, as she crouched down next to the furry object of discussion again, "is immortal. I think."

That sentence left Czeslaw slightly gobsmacked. He needed a moment to think of a follow-up question. Unfortunately that moment was long enough for the girl to grow a forlorn expression.

"I knew it." She grumbled, poking the mouse gently. "You _do_ think its stupid."

"N-no I don't!" Czes blurted out, more to himself then the girl. Like magic, the girl was facing him with a look of interest again.

"You don't?"

Czes was running mental gymnastics at this point. There was no back pedaling now. Either this girl was just loopy, or she somehow knew about immortality. Or both. Her lack of confidence suggested she wasn't playing some kind of trick on him... For starters, he supposed, he should probably figure out if she was an immortal herself.

"What's your name?" He asked.

"Um...Carol." The girl said, taken aback slightly by the topic change.

"Nice to meet you, Carol." Czes said, extending a hand that the Carol daintily took in her own. "My name's...Thomas."

Check that off the list. Had this Carol been an immortal, the laws of immortality would have forced Czeslaw to reveal his true name impulsively. So that begged the question of how she knew about it at all.

"What do you mean the mouse is immortal?" He asked, "How is that possible?"

It was here that Carol put her index finger to her lip again, clearly something she did when she was thinking. "Well, there's this news article that the Daily Days was working on a while back. More specifically, I was working on it..."

"You work at the Daily Days?" Czes asked with some genuine surprise. It seemed people from that paper had a habit of getting mixed up in his circles. He noted the look of pride on the girls face as she nodded and for once, understood it; children having to work in this day and age was by no means uncommon, but actually getting to write for such a paper was probably worth bragging about more than the countless zero-intelligence jobs out there. The job would also seem to explain her dress.

"We wrote the whole article about these immortal people who can't die living right under our noses in New York. It's all about where they came from and what they've been doing and...stuff."

"Ok..." said Czeslaw warily. "And what does that have to do with the mouse?"

"I saw it die once, then come back to life!"

Czes sighed. It was like absolutely everything in this damned town was immortal now. Firo and Ennis had told him the story of how they met, how Firo along with practically his entire family of Camorista had become exempt from death by drinking the same elixir that had granted him the same deal. It only figured that a choice amount of it would be wasted on such a small, insignificant creature.

But still, he had only this Carol's word to go on.

"How are you sure it's the same mouse?" He asked. The city was full to the brim with them after all.

"Well..." Carol said, "I'm not too sure, actually. It was just kind of an assumption."

Czes had to put effort into not rolling his eyes at that. "Well, why don't you kill it, as a test?"

The girl gasped, as if unbelieving that her conversation partner could suggest such a thing. "That would be awful! What if it turns out I'm wrong and it stays dead? Even if I'm right and it is immortal, I don't want to hurt it!"

Czes _couldn't_ hold back the eyeroll this time. "Then what was the point of chasing it?"

Carol offered a simple shrug. "I dunno. It felt kind of like running into an old friend..."

Looking around the alley, Czes saw a large plank of wood and grabbed it.

"Trust me," He said as he approached the mouse, "if it is immortal, it should get accustomed to pain sooner rather than later."

With that, he smashed the mouse into a bloody pulp before Carol could do anything more than scream, splattering blood everywhere. He observed what used to be the mouse closely, before turning to see the horrified look on Carol's face. A moment of silence passed, before Carol grew a grimace to rival the like's of Czes' own.

"_EWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW_!" She shouted, shaking her hands in front of her as if trying to will the blood away. "**_I think some of its blood got in my mouth!_**"

Even Czeslaw had to shudder with disgust at that, as the girl quickly stood up and began to run in panicked circles.

"Ew ew ew ew ew ew ew! I'm gonna die! Get some disinfectant! _GET SOME IODINE!_"

Her ranting, which the voice in the back of Czes' mind found highly amusing, was interrupted by the some of all the mice's blood rushing back into its body, the mouse a functioning whole again in a matter of seconds. Carol's screams stopped abruptly, and suddenly her face was positively glowing. She kneeled down next to the mouse again and shouted "It IS you!"

Her exuberance was short lived, as the mouse quickly bolted away from them. She sighed, before turning to Czes with a glare.

"What?" The boy asked.

"You didn't have to do that, Thomas." She said.

Czes sighed.

"I'm sorry." He said. Looking at the girl's hurt face, it occurred to him that he may have actually meant it.

"But hey," he said with a laugh that was oddly genuine, "At least you don't have to worry about that iodine."

He wasn't sure what made him say that, but he was glad he did, as it made Carol burst out into giggles.

"You certainly seem interested in all this immortal stuff." Carol said a moment later as the two walked out of the alley, clearly trying to steer their conversation back to a casual place.

"Who wouldn't be? It's an interesting subject."

Carol nodded in agreement. Suddenly, as they happened to passed by a clock, she suddenly began to panic again.

"_AH_!" She yelped "My break's almost up! I have to get back to work!"

Czeslaw nodded understandingly, as the girl offered her hand in much the same way he had offered his.

"I wish we could talk more." She said, her anger at him having hurt their furry friend seemingly forgotten. "It really was nice meeting you."

"...Same." Czes said, before he asked, "Did you ever publish it? That article of yours. I'd love to read it."

"Um, I can get you a copy if you want." The girl said, still smiling though she was clearly resisting a powerful urge to bolt for the sake of punctuality. "We can read it together next time I have time off. At the park maybe."

"That sounds nice. Why not tomorrow?"

"To moor it is!" The girl said, before running to work with a wave. "Bye Thomas!"

"Goodbye Carol!" Czes said, returning the wave.

It wasn't until the moment after she was gone that Czes noticed he was still smiling. Whatever it was that had just happened, he couldn't exactly say. He had certainly determined that whoever this girl was, she was by absolutely no means a threat to him. And yet, he would still be looking forward to getting a better read on her and what she knew tomorrow.

As he walked back home, Czes dimly noticed that his jacket had a few specks of blood left on it.

* * *

><p><em>AN: __**Ms. Awsamazing:**__ After my last failed attempt at a Baccano! fic I decided to sit back and read my OTP Czes and Carol. And then... WAIT THERE IS NONE._

_**TheCrampReturns**__: Even if these two characters never even meet in either the show or light novels (trust me this isn't the only adorable pairing we write for where that is the case) , we can't help but find the mere prospect of these two adorable. For me, it's mostly because I imagine they'd have a really interesting dynamic, with Carol being a naive and slightly dim-witted optimist, while Czeslaw is a paranoid cynic. Whether it comes out any good is debatable, but it should at least be fun._

_**Ms. Awsamazing: **__Hope you guys enjoyed. If you did (or even if you didn't) read and review._


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